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Thursday, September 17, 2009

Practical Tips from the Power Of Now

Ever since Steve Pavlinamentioned about Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, the book has been in my wishlist. It is a spiritual book. It talks about how living in the now can help us be peaceful and do our best and live our best life now. It might seem paradoxical but the principles mentioned in it are quite sound for us to follow.

A few practical tips from that

1. The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.

The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind.

This is very very true, mostly we play the same scenes back and forth again, thinking about it but not able to do anything about it.

2. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are cause by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

3.Wherever you are, be there totally. When listening to another person, don't just listen with your mind, listen with your whole body. Feel the energy field of your inner body as you listen.That takes attention away from thinking and creates a still space that enables you to truly listen without the mind interfering. You are giving the other person space - space to be. It is the most precious gift you can give. Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of listening is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that than what the other person is saying, and none at all to what really matters: the Being of the other person underneath the words and the mind. Of course you cannot feel someone else's Being except through your own. This is the beginning of the realization of oneness, which is love. At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that.

He says this way, we can give the other person the space to understand themselves and come out of it.

4.To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment

He says we should always work in the now and that doesn't mean not planning or thinking about the future. If all we want to do is plan, then do that planning in the now. Don't just build castles in the air about how it is going to work out and then leave it. I think this is the biggest take aways from the power of now.

It makes a lot of sense to always be in the present. We can embrace all our opportunities if we are in the present. We can look through and really what the other person is trying to tell if we are really present. I really really recommend this book. It will surely change your way of thinking as it has mine.